Enhancing Cultural Work Awareness

In the presenter’s HDR study, cultural work is being approached as a vital but weakly recognised dimension of many social roles. While the term cultural work is neither widely used nor used with consistent definitional scope, it is used in ways th at uniquely connect formative action; rich human engagements; deep order; deep belonging; dignifying dynamics; and respect for practitioners’ social roles.
The study is seeking to illuminate processes associated with cultural work and to develop a cultural work awareness strategy. Such awareness has profound future-making functions. It affects the maintenance of deep order; discerning and creative resourcefulness in immediate settings; the navigation of lifestyle influences; and social justice discernment.
The study is being undertaken as transdisciplinary practitioner research. The presenter has previously applied cultural work emphases in diverse practice fields and settings. Situational demands and developmental responses have generated a richly grounded array of practice sensibilities and process-naming habits. Some of the naming innovations and their generative events are being reviewed within the study. This presentation will introduce one of these process-naming areas, namely modes of formative articulation. It will give attention to the interplay of relational, deliberative and compositional dynamics; and to projects as loci of formative and ethical action.